Published on Friday, July 10, 2026
Attorney General Peter F. Neronha today joined a coalition of 15 attorneys general in filing a lawsuit to prevent the U.S. Department of Education from unlawfully terminating congressionally approved school-based mental health grants. In defiance of a December 2025 court order, the Trump Administration plans to unlawfully terminate these grants at the end of July, which would result in a loss of $3 million to the state.
“Nowadays, bullying doesn’t just exist in schools, it’s a hallmark of the federal government,” said Attorney General Neronha. “In this case, a bipartisan coalition in Congress allocated this funding to help address mental health crises in our schools, and in response to the devastating school shootings that have become all too common across the country. Our children deal with a unique set of problems which arise from growing up in 2026 – from loneliness to substance use disorder to the ever-present fear of violence – and the programs funded through these grants are designed to help them cope and hopefully thrive. Once again, this Administration does not have the constitutional authority to defy the will of Congress, and the Court, by withholding these critical funds, and they know this. Nevertheless, we will fight to ensure our kids continue to get the support they need.”
Congress established and funded the Mental Health Service Professional Demonstration Grant Program (MHSP) and its School-Based Mental Health Services Grant Program (SBMH) in response to profound losses Americans have suffered from school shootings. Following the Parkland tragedy in 2018, Congress appropriated $10 million to the MHSP to address shortages of mental health service professionals in low-income public schools by expanding the pipeline of mental health professionals into those schools.
In 2022, following the Uvalde school shooting, a bipartisan coalition in Congress allocated $1 billion to the MHSP to bring 14,000 mental health professionals into schools across the country. In their first year following this allocation, the programs provided mental and behavioral health services to nearly 775,000 elementary and secondary students nationwide. And sampled projects showed real results: a 50% reduction in suicide risk at high-need schools, decreases in absenteeism and behavioral issues, and increases in positive student-staff engagement.
In April 2025, the Department notified grantees that their funding would be discontinued for allegedly conflicting with the Trump administration's new priorities. The Department later revealed the grants had been targeted for their perceived support for diversity, equity, and inclusion. In response, the coalition filed a lawsuit against the Department over the discontinuation of the grants in July 2025. In December 2025, the coalition secured an order declaring the Department’s discontinuations unlawful. The Court also issued a permanent injunction that prohibited the Department from implementing the discontinuations “through any means.”
Since then, the Department has engaged in an ongoing campaign to hinder and threaten these grants. Although the Department issued continuation awards through December 31, 2026, they only provided funding for six months. Further, the Department threatened to withhold funding for the second half of the year and is currently forcing grantees to jump through hoops to access funds—diverting resources and staff away from supporting student mental health in order to complete unnecessary paperwork.
The Department claimed it planned to review the grants after six months and then make additional funding determinations. But instead, the Department targeted the grants protected by the original injunction and announced they plan to terminate the grants altogether by calling them “terminations” rather than “discontinuations,” which the court barred the Department from implementing in its decision. Although the coalition continues to fight this unlawful attempt to circumvent the court’s order, the attorneys general have filed this new lawsuit to cover any gaps that would threaten these critical grants.
In Rhode Island, one in five children aged 6-17 (19%) has a diagnosable mental health problem and one in ten (10%) has a significant functional impairment. Further, data from the 2021 Youth Risk Behavior Survey (YRBS) among Rhode Island high school students revealed that 37.8% of students felt sad or hopeless, 17.1% reported that they seriously considered attempting suicide, 14.5% reported that they had planned how they would attempt suicide during the last 12 months before the survey, and 9.7% attempted suicide. In addition to the growing mental health concerns among high school youth, 32% of students reported that they had been bullied in the past year.
The attorneys general allege that the Department’s plan to terminate the mental health grants violates the Administrative Procedure Act and the U.S. Constitution and are seeking a preliminary injunction to prevent the grants from being terminated.
Joining Attorney General Neronha in filing this lawsuit are the attorneys general of California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Washington, and Wisconsin.
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